Reading: I recently finished reading The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby, former editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, who suffered a massive stroke that left him with locked-in syndrome — a state where a person is conscious but unable to communicate due to total paralysis of the body. Bauby was left with some movement in his head and eyes, and wrote the entire book by having a helper recite the letters of the alphabet in their order of frequency in French, and blinking when the right letter was reached — meaning that he had to compose everything he had to say beforehand. The book is short and mainly describes his life after the stroke, in brief chapters — it’s a series of sessions in which facts, feelings and images are arranged with no wastage of words, but with finely tuned artistry, in such a way that a big picture of a life is created. Recommended.

In the paper today I read about Belgian locked-in syndrome sufferer Rom Houben, who was thought to be in a vegetative state for 23 years, whereas he was aware the entire time. I can’t process what that would be like — it’s literally unimaginable. How would you not go mad? Perhaps you would want to go mad, and be tortured by your ongoing full awareness and sanity. Houben is also writing a book.